1. Technical Field
The present disclosure generally relates to computing data centers. More particularly, the present disclosure relates to space-saving high-density modular data pod systems and energy-efficient cooling systems for modular data pod systems.
2. Background of Related Art
Traditionally, large data centers rely on large, oversized cooling infrastructures, including chilled water systems, chiller plants, and direct expansion cooling systems, to maintain their operating temperatures. There are many problems associated with the large, oversized cooling infrastructures for large data centers, including high initial capital, operation, and maintenance costs. For instance, a traditional chiller plant may require approximately 280 tons of chiller capacity to support a large data center having a power consumption capacity of 1 MW. Further, the traditional chiller plant is typically designed to cool the entire data center, as opposed to a few selected areas within the data center. As a result, the traditional chiller plant spends a considerable amount of energy on areas that do not need to be cooled. Further, one of the design constraints used to implement the traditional chiller plant is the power consumption capacity of the entire data center. For that reason, if the data center does not run at its power consumption capacity due to load fluctuations, the efficiency of the traditional chiller plant drops significantly.
Several cooling systems exist in the market having a more modular design than the traditional large, oversized cooling infrastructures that allow them to cool selected areas of a large data center at a reduced cost. For instance, an air-cooled “free cooling” system (also referred to as a straight air-cooled system) uses ambient air as a medium to cool server racks or containers of server racks in a large data center. However, one of the drawbacks of the air-cooled “free cooling” system is that it operates only in a cool, dry-climate environment thereby restricting its use to limited geographical areas in the world.
An adiabatic-assisted system is another cooling system that rivals the traditional large, oversized cooling electrical infrastructures. The adiabatic-assisted system is a cooling system assisted by adiabatic water having a more expanded geographical reach than the air-cooled “free cooling” system. However, the adiabatic-assisted system has certain cooling tolerance limitations and is incapable of providing sufficient cooling to high density data centers, e.g., data centers having IT rack loads of about 40 kW per IT rack.